Beetham Castle Hill

Beetham Castle Hill is a D-shaped earthwork sat on top of a low hill overlooking a bend of the River Bela, a tributary of the Rive Kent. The hill is within an area known as the Deer Park of the nearby Dallam Tower, and the earthwork is now within a field – the slopes down to the river to the east being wooded. The surrounding fields show traces of rig-and-furrow agriculture, although the field that the earthwork itself is in does not.

The earthwork has a straight edge on the northern side, where the field boundary is, with its curved edge to the south. It measures about 40 metres across, and has a perimeter bank around the summit as well as a ditch around the base, most clearly defined on the eastern side. There are hints in the LIDAR imagery that the ditch extends slightly into the northern field on the west side, but otherwise there is no indication that the earthwork was ever anything but D-shaped, and as the straight edge is not defensible (it is only 1.5 metres above ambient ground levels) the site has either been partially destroyed, never finished, or was never intended to be a defensive site at all. It has been suggested that the Castle Hill was a forerunner of Dallam Tower, and there is a record stating that the feature was levelled in the 18th century, when the mansion was built. A post hole and traces of charcoal suggest that there was a timber building on the mound, and that it may have burned down. As the earliest tower at Dallam is believed to have dated to c1375, if the hill was the early location for the tower, it was out of use by this date.